FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2007
Media Insurgencies: Panel Discussion
11 – 1 p.m. Polycentric Session, UC-Berkeley, Townsend Center
for the Humanities
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Communities, cultures and personal networks
are being created in cyberspace every day, radically altering our social
fabric and real-world power relations. At once a brave new world and
a mere reflection of longstanding, global disparities—in terms
of ethnicity and language among several social markers —cyberspace
is precisely the sort of terrain on which notions of global citizenship
and subjectivity can most fruitfully be rearticulated.
Though we agree with the feminist scholarship
on this subject that cyberspace could provide a means to contest bodily
inscriptions such as race and gender, we argue that cyberspace can also
provide a new means to reify these categories of difference. Cybernetic
entities, quite apart from being inhuman “cyborgs”, are
in fact deeply embedded in, and just as subject to the docilization
of bodies as it occurs in “real life”.
To prove this, we proffer the examples of identity
and linguistic politics online in order to reaffirm that cyberspace
is still very much a thoroughly contested space, one that is driven
by market forces and structures of power/surveillance as much as it
is by its enterprising individuals.
Participant Bios:
Bilal Hashmi completed his M.A. in English and
South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto in 2007. His interests
are interdisciplinary in nature, and include critical theory, translation
studies and comparative literature. He is currently the Managing Editor
of Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (Duke
University Press).
Jason Ulim Kim was born and raised in Toronto,
Canada and got his B.A. in History and Political Science at the University
of Toronto in 2007. His research interests include postcolonial studies,
postmodern philosophy, and cyberculture(s). Jason is currently pursuing
a PhD in Ethnic Studies at the University of California-Berkeley. Political
Science at the University of Toronto in 2007. His research interests
include postcolonial studies, postmodern philosophy, and cyberculture(s).
Jason is currently pursuing a PhD in Ethnic Studies at the University
of California-Berkeley.